A sermon, commemorative of national blessings

E 458

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

DDDD1747Elb

******

•#V* %/^P^V>* %J^^*V* %/^^v*" \

AwAv

*0, *o . » * A

>~ . t • © .. "^ * >

*<°-

' *0» A** ►

v .♦i^:

^'X

°o. *V^' .0°

■ y% --l^-0 /\ •;

.,1*

o • a

jP^

. >v^

V
**"*

0 f^ *?W-S* 4&

*<

A SERMON",

COMMEMORATIVE OF

NATIONAL BLESSINGS,

PREACHED IN THE CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,

APEIL 13, 1862.

THE DAT RECOMMENDED BY TIIE PRESIDENT OF TIIE UNITED STATES
AS AN OCCASION OF SPECIAL THANKSGIVING FOR RECENT
NATIONAL VICTORIES, AND OF PRATER FOR THE
WOUNDED AND THE BEREFT, AND FOR FUR-
THER BLESSINGS ON OUR CAUSE.

BY REV. F. F. ELLINWOOD,

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH.

ROCHESTER, N. Y.

PUBLISHED BT REQUEST.

1862.

tA

.%

Rev. F. F. Ellinwood ;

Bear Sir .-—The undersigned were highly pleased with your
discourse delivered in the Central Presbyterian Church of this city, on Sab-
bath morning, the 13th inst. Many others have also expressed great satisfac-
tion in that discourse and, with us, desire to see it published. Will you,
therefore, have the kindness to furnish us with a copy for publication ?
Respectfully,

Geo. W. Parsons,
A. M. Hastings,
J. E. Hatdon,
E. Child,
Rochester, April 21st, 1862.

Frederick Starr,
Wm. Alling,
J. H. Brewster,
Wm. A. Hubbard.

Geo. W. Parsons, A. M. Hastings, and others :

Dear Brethren.— I defer to your judgment and accede to your
request, appreciating the kindly spirit in which it is made. The discourse
named in your note is herewith placed at your disposal.
I remain your ob't servant,

F. F. Ellinwood.
Rochester, April 24, 1862.

». ST«0NO k CO., fdlKlBM, AOCHESTER, H. V.

SEEMOK

"Lord, thou hast been favorable unto thy land." Ps. 85: 1. " For the
shields of the earth belong unto God." Ps. 47 : 9.

Every blessing which God confers upon us is worthy of thanks-
giving. Coming from Him it is a religious gift, demanding a
religious gratitude, and is therefore a suitable theme for thought
or discussion at any time or place.

Some one has said that true piety consists not so much in doing
specified religious things distinctively, as in doing the common
things of life — all things — in a religious way. Whatever is re-
ferred to God, done for Him, ascribed to Him, is a part of every
day religion. The battle with the Amelekites was as truly a
work of faith as the erection of the tabernacle.

The Chief Magistrate of these United States has called upon
us to mingle in our worship to-day the joyous notes of praise to
God for national blessings, and the expressions of prayerful sym-
pathy for those by whom our common triumphs have been dearly
purchased. Our hearts respond to this timely proclamation. We
feel that there is a greatly accumulated indebtedness to the God
of battles, before whom months ago this nation so solemnly
spread out her pressing wants ; and there is no reason why such
blessings should not be acknowledged in the same devout spirit as
if they had been conquests of another kind.

We have perhaps for some time past looked too exclusively
upon the human aspects of the great rebellion, and the merely
human probabilities of its suppression. We have learned to read
■of victories, and only victories, and to praise men for them — and
such praise is just in its true subordination — but we have, in some
degree, forgotten to appreciate the help of God. I rejoice, there-
fore, that the President has again recalled public attention to a
religious consideration of our affairs — turned our thoughts from
the newspaper, the map, the daily and hourly discussion of meas-

ures and chances and prospects, to Him who is the sole author of
good, and who must still be our supreme trust. I rejoice, too,
in the fact that amid the hardening influences of war, rendering
men forgetful of, if not indifferent to, the misery and suffering
which even victory costs, he has appealed to the people to remem-
ber specially in their prayers and sympathies the wounded, the
impoverished, and the bereaved. I rejoice, moreover, that for
future successes he enjoins upon us still to look to God who
orders the circumstances and weighs the chances of the battle-
field, and who can ordain either victory or defeat.

It is very certain that as a people we do not realize the wonder-
ful transformations through which we have passed within one
short year and a half.

European nations, who have so often wondered at our excitabil-
ity, might now stand amazed — as they do in fact — at the quiet,
matter-of-course way in which we sit down at our firesides and
read, two or three times a day, of new victories that affect the
destinies of millions, and still move calmly on our way without
an hour's interruption of business or a moment's loss of sleep.

It may be doubted whether the American character can ever
be fully and satisfactorily explained on any hypothesis or by any
theory. At least, the strange and unexpected phases which it
has exhibited within the last two or three years have defied and
confounded all generalizations and speculations and vaticinations.
And it is no matter of surprise, that the able correspondent of a
foreign journal, after spending many months in attempts at Amer-
ican portraiture, has at length retired from the field and the un-
dertaking in despair. Still we do not greatly regret this versatil-
ity of character ; for if only our uprisings be not faithless toward
Heaven, and our quiet acceptance of glorious events be not want-
ing in devout gratitude and appreciation, we may look for a time
when these diversified elements will be fused into a nation;]] char-
acter the more vigorous for its almost contradictory constituents.
If the favor of God attend our development all will be well.

In order the more clearly to understand how great things a
favoring Providence has done for us, let us compare our present
condition as a people with that in which wc have found ourselves
at three different periods within eighteen months.

J. — Wc recur to the autumn of 18G0, and the winter that
followed — that dark period when* every man that loved his couu-

try was heart-sick at the calamities that had actually overtaken
her, and at the clouds of still darker portent that lowered threat-
eningly all around her horizon.

Ou the 20th of December, 1860, the State Convention of South
Carolina, by a unanimous vote of one hundred and sixty-nine,
drove the first entering wedge of secession into the trembling
fabric of our National Union. By the aid of the magnetic wires,
(which should never have been cursed by such a use,) the entire
Republic was made to feel the shock almost at the same hour.
That very day, Mr. Garnet of Virginia, rose in the House of Rep-
resentatives and insolently announced to the Speaker that " one of
the sovereign states of this confederacy had, by the glorious act of
her people, withdrawn from the union," and so low and abject had
the spirit of the American Congress become that Southern mem-
bers were allowed to applaud this treasonable announcement with-
out even a word of protest. That evening the bell-ringings and
bonfires, and mass meetings witnessed in other state capitals and
chief cities of the South gave full proof that the work of dissolu-
tion had begun in earnest.

In rapid succession commissioners passed from State to State,
openly inviting fellowship in treason ; conventions were called by
every means, constitutional or otherwise, and State after State was
formally numbered with the rebel " confederacy." Forts, arsen-
als, dockyards, &c, belonging to the United States were forcibly
seized, and treason in the departments, in the army and the navy,
became so common that a bewildered people knew not in whom
of all their public servants it was safe to trust.

Leading men of the nation were even then secretly negotiating
in other lands for the munitions of war, and courting foreign sym-
pathy and help in the ruin of their country.

Meanwhile members of the cabinet, under solemn oaths of
office, one after another resigned, revealing their gigantic frauds
as they withdrew. One, whose name it were almost a profanity
to utter, had stripped the national armories for the ends of trea-
son, and another had purposely embarrassed and crippled our
finances with the same design. Senators still under pay of the
government, used their whole influence to thwart and weaken that
government, and when neither acts nor insolent words could ac-
complish more, they disdainfully withdrew to take up the sword
in the desperate cause of national ruin. Hope seemed well nigh

6

extinct, — the more so, as the chief executive of the government
proved but the pitiable embodiment of imbecility. The adminis-
tration was utterly paralized and worthy of contempt, the people
were bewildered, the world astonished. Foreign jealousy pro-
nounced, with ill-disguised satisfaction, the sentence of our national
doom, and wrote already our praiseless epitaph ; and the snows
of winter, then just gathering over our beloved land, seemed the
winding sheet of all that we had so highly prized.

Though we had a strong confidence that God would in His own
time and way, solve this strange problem for the ultimate ad-
vancement of civilization and the good of His own cause, yet it
seemed a long, dark process that must accomplish it. Human
sagacity was foiled and baffled. Peace conventions were mere
child's play ; and compromises, however numerously proposed,
however skilfully framed, however strongly backed by petitions,
pleased nobody, accomplished nothing, and only afforded time for
the enemy to mature his plans and perfect his preparations.

" Will the new President be successfully inaugurated 1 Can he
be 1" were questions which at length assumed a very grave
aspect, for foul conspiracies were on foot, and the national capitol
was threatened with destruction. Moreover, the disease of the
Republic, as Cicero would call it, seemed not merely local but
constitutional and all-pervading. A secret cabal, worse than
Cataline's, wras every where present. There were treasonable
men and treasonable presses in every State in the Union, and the
South hoped that corruption enough would be found in the North
to aid and abet the work of dissolution even to entire success.

The last days of February came, and for the first time in our
history a President elect was compelled to enter the national cap-
ital secretly to elude the assassin's deadly thrust. It was our
darkest hour. Never since her first great struggle for political
existence had our country been so cloven down and humbled in
the dust before the nations.

Now. as we turn from those dark and ill-boding scenes to the
spectacle which our country presents to-day, and mark the con-
trast seen at Washington, and indeed everywhere, and as we
remember how little of all this our short foresight could then have
even conceived or hoped for, how shall we express adequately our
gratitude lor what God foresaw and has thus Car accomplished'?

" What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward

me ? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon His name.
I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all
His people."

II. — There is another period with which we will contrast our
present condition. One year ago this day, the 13th of April,
Port Sumpter was reduced. One year ago to-day that brave gar-
rison of seventy men, worn and famished, and preventing suffo-
cation only by wet cloths upon their faces, yielded at length,
though honorably, their position to a numerous foe. There is
something dreamlike in the retrospect, as we recall the events
that so rapidly followed that day, and the spirit that pervaded
different parts of the land. The South were jubilant, not under-
standing yet the able strategy by which their arms had been pur-
posely diverted from an assault upon the capital at the mere cost
of a Southern fort, and at the same time the full responsibility of
beginning the war laid at their door. Nothing could exceed the
complacency and hopefulness of the conspirators, and the arro-
gance and contempt with which the old union was treated by the
rebel press after the " brilliant victory" of Fort Sumpter.

The step had been taken thus hastily as a means of uniting the
South, but, alas ! for the rebellion, it had in an astonishing manner
united the North. Had the fatal lethargy of the loyal States been
suffered to continue undisturbed, the slow and insiduous poison of
disunion might have accomplished its most destructive work, but
with the first shock of actual war the great North awoke, and that
very hour the real hope of secession perished.

The true friends of the Union were everywhere roused as one
man ; party was forgotten ; all waste of time with compromises
was at an end. Lurking treason in loyal States was compelled to
hide its head, money and men were offered on every hand, and
within three days the administration saw that which it desired to
see more than all things else — saw itself firmly and nobly sustain-
ed by the unanimous, devoted, sublime patriotism of a perfectly
united people.

Still whatever assurance this grand uprising might give of ulti-
mate success, there was for the time most imminent danger. On
the 15th of April, two days after the fall of Sumpter, President
Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand
volunteers, and commanding all rebellious combinations to dis-
perse within twenty days — a command which, though not very

8

likely to be obeyed, still had the effect to stamp the insurrection
with its true character, as such, before the country and the world.
While from the free States the response to the call for volunteers
was prompt and hearty, the governors of Missouri, Kentucky and
Tennessee (where are those governors now ?) returned insulting
refusals which seemed little better, and finally proved no better,
than open endorsements of the rebel cause. Then came on days
and nights of most fearful anxiety. Washington was in im-
minent danger, and must at all cost be garrisoned. The de-
partments must be sifted of traitors ere it should prove too late.
Baltimore and Maryland must be opened for the passage of
troops, an army must be created and hastened on to the seat of
war, secret intrigues must be ferreted out and their telegraphic
communications seized upon and broken up ; and not the least of
all, our foreign relations required to be readjusted, and the world
to be convinced that, as a nation, we still intended to live.

Meanwhile the commercial interests of the country were well-
nigh paralyzed. Securities in many States had become utterly
worthless, and of course involved the failure of countless banks.
Southern repudiation, too, added its outrages to the general dis-
tress, and thousands who had lived in affluence were reduced to
penury.

We look back with shuddering upon those anxious days, even
as they were known to us here in Rochester, and we have never
realized a tithe of the sacrifices and sufferings of this war as com-
pared with other places ; yet even here an ill-boding solicitude
was felt by us all, so deep and so heavy that we pray God that
we and our country may forever be spared from its recurrence.

Nor would we willingly repeat the experiences of the period
immediately following that just named — the period of flags and
intemperate and wasteful zeal, of shoddy outfits and superfluous
pistols, of crude civil soldiering and newspaper generalship, of
congressional pressure and so-called "political necessities," of gen-
eral vain confidence and Godless irreverence, and all those untow-
ard influences which led finally to the sad culmination of a Sunday
battle at Bull Run. We contrast the present with those two or
three months, and are astonished to see how much the lessons of
so brief a history have done for us. The nation seems as a power
at least — to have passed from the flash and frivolity of a crude
boyishness to the solid maturity of manhood in the short space of

a few months. Never had there been such symptoms of weak-
ness as then : never have there been such proofs of power as now.
At no former period in our whole history have we been in a posi-
tion that promised so well for the stability of our institutions as
to-day. These institutions have always won for themselves a the-
oretic commendation. They have been thought, by friends at
least, to be happily and wisely framed. Fourth of July orators
have exalted and glorified them with no fear of refutation, for
previous to all severe tests they flourished of course. But never
till now have we been able, before friend and foe, to pronounce
them fully adequate to the most trying ordeals that a nation is
ever called to meet. We have not perished, as was predicted, by
the impatience of the mob. We have not been wrecked by finan-
cial panic and bankruptcy, as was so ably planned for us by the
foreign journals. We have not rebelled at taxation, and it is to
be hoped that few of our citizens will be found sordid enough
even to raise a murmur. Public confidence in the government
has not failed, and now, even while our wide domain is being
shaken by two or three battles, a week commerce is steadily re-
viving. By the favor of God we have been the first among
nations to disclose a patriotism that can array three quarters of a
million of volunteers, and despised as we were a few months since,
the inventive genius and fearful prowess of our iron " cheese box"
have virtually demolished the wooden hulks of all Europe's
boasted navies.

We will not speak exultingly, (for surely we have been low in
the dust,) but with encouragement and gratitude.

We have been in the furnace not in vain. Much dross has
already been removed, and we hope that when that end comes
which will come, much that yet remains will have been purged
away.

And one noticeable improvement which we see in contrast-
ing the present with the period last referred to, is that which per-
tains to the public recognition of God's law. The war, so far as
we are concerned, is now being conducted in a manner more in
accordance with Christian principles. Let me read, just here,
from one of our secular papers — a copy of the New York Times
published two days since. I always like to quote such testimony
from secular papers, because I regard it as one of the hopeful

10

features of our country and our age. It is taken from an edito-
rial article, entitled " Sunday Battles" and reads as follows :

" The late terrible struggle at Pittsburgh adds another to the long list of
Sunday battles. The facts are so clear in this and numerous other conflicts,
and the results have been so uniform and decisive, that comment is not only
warranted but demanded, alike by philosophy, patriotism and piety. The
general statement can not be gainsaid, that the more important movements
of the National forces, in the early stages of the present war, were made on
Sunday ; and that they were undeniable failures. Patterson's column was
constantly notorious for its manouvering on Sundays — and for little else. Big
Bethel, Bull Run, and Ball's Bluff were the great blunders and defeats of
attacking armies on Sunday. All these engagements, excepting Ball's Bluff,
under the now imprisoned Gen. Stone, preceded Gen. McClellan's noble Sab-
bath order. Thenceforward the rebels have made the Sunday assaults, with
invariable loss of the battles thus waged. Mill Spring opened their career of
Sunday fighting, which closes with Pittsburgh. The battle of Winchester
was begun on Sunday morning. The first of these battles cost the rebels
Kentucky ; the second, the valley of Virginia ; and the third, the Mississippi
valley. The Merrimac, too, after its destructive Saturday's raid, ran a muck
against the Monitor on Sunday, and has spent a month in repairing damages.

"Add to the facts, that most of the Generals commanding, whose names
figure as assailants in these battles, were slain in them, or are in disgrace on
account of them, and there is food for reflection in these bits of history.
What has become of our Gen. Pierce, of Big Bethel memory ? What of
Gen. Stone ? Where are Zollicoffer and Sydney Johnston ? In short, since
we have ceased the business of Sunday fighting, and the rebels took it up,
we have had only victories to record, and they only defeats and surrenders.
Fort Donelson and Island No. 10 were our Sunday morning benison on week-
day prowess.

"Nor are these isolated historical facts. History is full of them. The
British forces assailed us on Lake Champlain and at New Orleans on Sunday,
and were defeated. We assailed them at Quebec ; our army was repulsed
and its leader slain. We began the battle of Monmouth, and had the worst
of it. Napoleon began the battle of Waterloo, and lost his army and his
empire.

" We content ourselves with the simple collation of these euggestive facts.
Let them go to swell that mighty volume of testimony to the supremacy and
stability of a law as old as creation, which claims quite other use of one-sev-
enth part of time than the work of willing human butchery."

Brethren, let us thank God fur these facts, and for this recog-
nition of them by an influential political paper. Have we not
great encouragement to pray that when the last cloud of war shall
have passed from the sky, and the last booming thunders of civil
strife shall have wasted their echoes into silence, we may see the
claims of all religious truth established on a firmer basis among
us than ever before !

11

III. — I wish to contrast the present hour with still another
period embraced within the past few months. All know how the
year 1862 began. A new and darker storm had appeared rapidly
gathering over the sea. After having, as we supposed, passed
through the most trying stages of this great civil war, and settled
into the quiet and uniform belief that the rebellion would be suc-
cessfully put down, we were threatened with a vaster and more
ruinous struggle with Great Britain.

By an unforeseen circumstance we seemed driven to the alter-
native of choosing between a foreign war or submission to an
arrogance intent upon our humiliation and disgrace. Whether
there could be an honorable escape from the dilemma was a grave
question. On the north of us as well as on the south were bitter
animosities and warlike preparations. All Europe looked with
intense interest upon the " situation," and trembled at the possibly
fatal result to us. Americans abroad probably never before ex-
perienced so much of anxiety and suspense — not to say shame
and reproach for their country's sake. And even when the one
fruitful cause of strife had been removed it was still felt that
some other — a pretext at least — would be found, and that we
should yet have war. The blockade of southern ports was looked
upon with growing impatience by the commerce of Europe, and
as very little had been accomplished for some months toward
quelling the rebellion, there was apparently great reason to fear
that foreign interference would sooner or later complicate our
affairs.

What, then, has a favoring Providence done for us in three
months'? The last threatening indication of a foreign war has
been swept away, the question of breaking the blockade has been
decided in the negative by both England and France. Our neigh-
bors over in Canada have relaxed their evening drill and become
our admirers, and everywhere the preponderance of outside opin-
ion and sympathy, after so much oscillation, appears to have set-
tled at length into a fixed conclusion against a pro-slavery rebel-
lion and in favor of the stars and stripes.

Meanwhile a series of successes seldom if ever equalled in the
history of warfare, has crowned the national arms. Since the 1st
of January, or within less than a hundred days, we have had
recorded the victorious battles of Pikeville, Mill Spring, Fort
Henry, Roanoke Island, Fort Donelson, the strategic reduction of

12

Bowling Green, the occupation of Nashville, the advance on Mar-
tinsburgh, Leesburgh and Charlestown, the decisive battle of Win-
chester, the raising of the Potomac blockade, the bloodless reduc-
tion of Columbus, the terrible but decisive battle of Pea Ridge,
the forced evacuation of Manassas, the taking of New Madrid,
the strikingly providential arrest and vanquishment of the Merri-
mack, the storming of Newbern, the capture of Fernandina and
other places on the Florida and Georgia coasts, the taking of
Beaufort, the wonderful successes at Island No. 10, and last of all,
the close and sanguinary but decisive battle at Pittsburgh Land-
ing.

Now we are a very nervous people, and while God has given
us this unparalleled series of successes in our country's cause —
more than a score in number — there are doubtless not a few who
feel that the number should have been fifty instead of twenty ;
and had it been fifty, they would probably say a hundred. But
God grant that we may not tempt Him with unreasonableness
and ingratitude after such manifestations of His favor !

This is certainly making history very fast. Many and great
have been our successes, let us not the less appreciate them be-
cause they are many.

That which we prayed for months ago, and have continued
to pray for from time to time, has in great part been fulfilled : let
it be this day joyfully and gratefully acknowledged.

Nor will we forget the numerous circumstances which have
peculiarly illustrated our dependence on the help of God in secur-
ing these results.

Proof after proof has been afforded of the weakness and short-
sightedness of men even in their best endeavors. Storms at sea
threatened to destroy, and might have destroyed, each of the two
great naval expeditions to the Atlantic coast. But for a favoring
Providence the fate of the great Spanish armada might have been
their fate. Again, at the battle of Winchester, if the enemy's
reinforcements had reached the field in time, Ave should have been
defeated ; while, at Pittsburgh Landing, if our reinforcements had
not arrived in time we should have been defeated.

Again, but for the providential coincidence (it was merely such)
that brought the Monitor to Hampton Roads just in the hour of
need, the utmost devastation might have been carried into our
navy and, perhaps, our great seaport towns. And what shows

13

peculiarly on how many unforeseen influences a victory may de-
pend, and how little, therefore, can be predicted by any but the
All-seeing One, is the significant fact that in all the great engage-
ments of this war, the party which seemed for a time victorious,
and was confident of entire success, has at last been vanquished.
It was so at Bull Kun ; it was so at Pea Ridge ; it was so at
Pittsburgh Landing. Indeed every commander, however great
his skill and however numerous and brave his forces, has always
reason to feel, when entering the battlefield, that there are ele-
ments of success — chances, if you please — which lie entirely
above his reach and beyond his control. And this being true we,
in our safe homes and churches are called upon to look constantly
for Divine guidance and help on behalf of our officers and our
troops.

But in looking over the various aspects of this great struggle
through which our country is passing, I recall some matters of
thanksgiving not contemplated in the public proclamation. The
President has called upon us to make grateful acknowledgment
of our victories by sea and land, and our escape from foreign in-
tervention.

But I think we ought to thank God for the President himself —
so wise and intrepid a helmsman in this unparalleled storm. He
was placed in office, humanly speaking, by a party, but in another
view far above parties, he was raised up of God for these eventful
times. The force of events, the co-operatiou of all patriotic men
of whatever name, and especially the favoring hand of Provi-
dence, have borne him above all platforms to the noble and sub-
lime work of saving a great nation from peril.

Since the days of Washington so urgent and difficult a crisis
has not appeared ; since the days of Washington so remarkable
an adaptation of a great man to a great mission has not appeared.
We find in our honored executive no one striking element of
genius, perhaps, but he presents what is better, the happy union
of strong common sense, great prudence on delicate and difficult
questions, undaunted coolness in perplexity, and an energy of de-
cision that can, when need be, take the responsibility and move
forward, and make others move. This choice combination of
striking characteristics, how seldom found ! And we bless God
that He has united them all in the character of one whom He has
ordained and schooled for the peculiar requisitions of this hour.

14

And in connection with onr avoidance of foreign intervention,
which is named in the proclamation, do we not owe a debt of
gratitude to Him who made and endowed all men, for our able
and successful diplomacy with other powers during the past few
months 1

It is not necessary for you or for me to be in all respects an
admirer of our Secretary of State, but I know that there is candor
enough in this audience for a perfectly unanimous acknowledg-
ment of that masterly statesmanship of which the nation may
well be proud, and which, divinely ordained as we believe it was
for this peculiar international crisis, should call forth our thanks-
giving and praise to God.

Another thing which we should not fail to note with grateful
satisfaction, is the series of judicious steps which have been taken
with regard to Slavery. "What could have been more difficult
than to treat properly this delicate matter in the present juncture
of our affairs 1 The sentiment of Europe, and the hot haste of a
fanatical few in this country, have constantly pressed the subject
of emancipation, at whatever cost to the general objects of the
War. On the other hand, the advancement of opinion in the bor-
der States has been exceedingly slow in reaching even its present
stage — demanding not only great prudence, but frequently a delay
even in that which the government had a right to do at once.
But what have we seen to admire and rejoice at 1 In the first
place, the strict adherence of the administration to thoroughly
constitutional ground in all measures whatever ; in the second
place, the proposal to gradually purchase the slaves of such States,
and such States only, as might desire to dispose of them ; in the
third place, the act passed by so large a vote for the abolition of
slavery in the District of Columbia, and, in the fourth place, the
incipient negotiation of a treaty with Great Britain for the utter
suppression of the African Slave Trade. These, taken separately
or together, are steps of prudence and constitutional equity, and
yet steps of incalculable promise for our country and the world.
We may well discountenance and rebuke all ravings of a hot and
inconsiderate haste by whomsoever manifested, while we thank
God, rather, for these firm and solid, and real advances in the
right direction.

And not the least hopeful and thankworthy feature of this

15

whole matter is the general harmony of opinion and feeling in
regard to these measures.

Thousands of conservative men, and even representatives, of the
border States have favored them, and yet they satisfy the better
judgment of the great body of those at the North who have not
been known as conservative.

Indeed, there is something marvelous in the gradual but steady
transformations and assimilations which have been going on in
the popular mind during the year past. Do they not constitute
the most striking feature of even these times'? We have not
plunged into excesses by way of retaliation ; we have not placed
the fire-brand in the hand of the negro ; we have not listened to
the lectures and reproofs of Mr. Spurgeon or any other conceited
Englishman on the subject of immediate and indiscriminate eman-
cipation ; and yet we have greatly advanced as an entire people.
It has been a healthy change. It has assimilated wide and extrav-
agant diversities in the broader and deeper current of a true pro-
gress.

Indeed, apologists for slavery are now exceedingly rare. The
morbid and absurd sensitiveness on the subject, once so common,
has passed away. All look upon the system as a gigantic curse :
— as the undoubted cause of this frightful war, and the prolific
source of perpetual strifes so long as it shall exist in a civilized
nation. All believe that in this country it has received its death
blow, and that by its own treasonable and blood-stained hand.
All rejoice in the hope that it will pass away — only praying that
it may perish with the least possible shock to our national life,
and with the least violence to the constitutional rights of the seve^
ral States.

But our President, in his proclamation, has not forgotten the
thousands who have fallen in this strife, and more especially the
multitudes of sorrowing survivors. Over some of the brave
dead, more particularly known to him, he has stood and shed the
manly tears of a heartfelt sorrow. And he has called upon his
countrymen in their various sanctuaries to offer their prayers unto
God for that peculiar support and comfort which only He can
give to the sick, the wounded, the widowed, the orphaned, and to
all whose hearts are weighed down with the sorrow of bereave-
ment.

This is therefore not only a day of national thanksgiving, but

16

also a day of national condolence. The Christian grace of "prayer-
ful sympathy (for not all sympathy knows how to pray) — the
apostolic injunction to "rejoice with them that do rejoice and
weep with them that weep" is, in its substance and spirit, spread
out by a chief magistrate before a great nation.

When has such an appeal from such a source been made before ]

Oh ! let us rejoice together that there is progress in the world.
Let us rejoice that, over all these mountains and vallies and prai-
ries where once painted savages hideously danced around their
trophies of scalps, the noble and benign ethics of the Gospel find
to-day this marked and general witness and commendation.

And we will include the suffering and the bereft even of our
enemies in our sympathy and our prayers. Such is the true con-
sistency of the Gospel's requirements. An enemy fallen is, in
the eye of practical Christian charity, an enemy no longer. And
the woes of our whole country (and it must still be one) rise up
before us and touch our hearts to-day. I shall not be guilty of
the bad taste of attempting to picture for mere effect the horrors
of the battle-field. Most of us know little of their fearfulness,
and we would not know. It is probably safe, however, to say
that by the dire agencies of carnage on the field, and of sickness in
the hospital, not less than twenty-five thousand American youth —
North and South — have already perished, while perhaps a still
greater number have been crippled or diseased for life.

Some in this audience have lost near and dear friends in this
sad struggle, and there is scarcely a city or village or town in the
land that has not its desolate homes. For the unknown multi-
tudes of sorrowing ones we offer our heartfelt prayers to God
to-day.

And we will not forget the request of our Chief Magistrate,
that he and his counsellors, and our armies, may be sustained by
n nation's prayers. More than a year since, as he left his western
home, he made a similar request of his friends and fellow citizens,
and we have had good reason to feel that it was not in vain. It
affords us a lesson of encouragement, then, for the future. And
as we look forward to the grave uncertainties that lie before us,
we should not be too confident — save as our confidence is placed
in God. We have had remarkable successes, we may meet with
sad reverses, too. There is enough, certainly, in the posture of
affairs to render us very hopeful : let us be also prayerful.

54 W

fc vo/

"— -1* ax c\*

■'••' a? *>> V"1 **

* 4.* ** '

W
.*"\

<> **TV»t «G*" ^L *••»• A <* *'VV.% .ov ^. *

**o«